Carmel Baker, CEO of Hodges Real Estate, reflects on uniting her staff in the first year of her role.
Hodges is one of the oldest real estate agencies in Australia; we celebrated our 160th birthday this year. When I joined Hodges, just over a year ago now, the executive team was a long-standing group. They had achieved a great deal; the brand stands for community, trust and care. We have customer surveys to prove it, I naturally felt very confident about the business and its future.
But, like many thriving businesses do, the group had been busy servicing customers and forgotten to look at the business, its culture and acknowledge its skilled talent and significant achievements. We had underestimated the familiarity in the Victorian market of the brand, the level of comradery that comes with a team that has worked alongside each other for many years, and the customer satisfaction that existed with every transaction we do.
In my opinion, celebrating success is one of the best ways you can create focus and unite a team together. This was particularly important to me as the new CEO. The first 12 months of my appointment was all about trying to create a sense of team at Hodges and finding the things we had in common rather than the things we didn’t.
The standard approach with a new CEO is to try to come in and change the world. That wasn’t my approach at all, it was to come in and listen. And to understand where the business and its people wanted to be in 12 months, five years and so on. Through in-depth conversations with individuals and teams I very quickly learnt of some of Hodges very special attributes.
So I started with bringing attention to the overwhelming response to our customer surveys, acknowledging the history that we have and discussing the future. There was an amazing amount of staff who didn’t know the history of Hodges. Instilling in people a sense of pride for who they work for is pivotal when building a solid team.
The day I shared with 180 staff the story of the Hodges history will always remain in my mind. It was a game changer. Afterwards one of the Hodges team members came up and said to me, "What you shared with us today, you singlehandedly made me decide I never want to leave Hodges."
Once all Hodges people acknowledged our history and felt excited about the future we decided to celebrate the 160th anniversary with a rebrand. The change was necessary and timely, but what was important to Hodges directors was to maintain the DNA of the business.
The Hodges people were engaged and came on the journey. I ensured the designers that created our new logos understood and maintained what the Hodges brand stands for. It resulted in new branding that every single person loves. Brand consistency is very important. In a franchise business, it’s very easy for the brand to be diluted.
The rebrand won gold and silver at the Melbourne Design Awards and the Sydney Design Awards, and we are also a finalist in the Hong Kong design awards. The process that we undertook and the outcome have been applauded.
They’re the highest design accolades that anyone in real estate industry has won, and it’s the sort of thing that gets staff excited about who we are, what we do and where we are going.
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